


Jackanapes

by PrairieDawn



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Betelgeuse Planetary Nebula Observation Platform, Concurrent with ST:TNG season 1, Gen, Kid Fic, Lots of nonhumanoid characters., M/M, Medical stuff, Noncorporeal characters, Telepathy Stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 01:06:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12806244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: The adventures of a group of undersupervised children on a remote science station, set during the Next Generation time period.  In this first installment, the kids borrow a maintenance pod to collect a toy accidentally lost in the nebula.Special thanks to my daughter Ika Musume, who upon being asked what she would do on a space station promptly replied, "I would throw marshmallows out an airlock to watch them blow up."





	1. Experiments with Hard Vacuum

There was only one airlock on Betelgeuse Nebula Research Station that was situated near a large viewing window. It was a smaller airlock, located just outside the infirmary, suitable for disposals or for releasing small powered probes into the nebula, but it was large enough for the children’s purposes. It was roughly ten in the morning station time, and all of the adults were far too busy to concern themselves with four children experimenting with the effects of hard vacuum on everyday objects. Not that they were technically allowed to play, ahem, experiment, with the airlock.

A nine year old human girl crouched in front of it, flanked by a four foot long centipede and a meter tall grayish sphere covered in pale yellow, fingerlike tentacles. A Vulcan child, as fair as the human was dark, sat on her haunches by the human girl’s feet, watching a line of tiny antlike stowaways marching in formation near the floor. The human took a marshmallow from the arthropoid Pluran’s deep mahogany colored pincers, rolling it gently between her palms to change it from a soft slightly flattened cylinder to a soft, slightly flattened cone. She repeated the exercise with two more marshmallows, then arranged them in a rough triangle on the floor of the airlock with their points facing away from the window and closed the door. One more time, she held out her hand for a marshmallow. Kkit rummaged in the bag. “Want to do another one?” they asked, puzzled.

“Mine!” she replied wickedly, then popped the fourth marshmallow into her mouth. Kkit followed suit, mandibles clicking.

A voice piped up from near Elinor’s knees, not bothering to disguise disgust, probably because her father was not present to admonish her. “How can you eat those things?” In that way common to very small children, Chel stood in a single movement without using her hands, making a swishing noise in her bright yellow quilted snowsuit. The tiny Vulcan was much too cold sensitive to be out of her quarters in anything but cold weather gear right down to knit cap and thin stretchy gloves. Her father had balked at the color Chel had chosen until Elinor, as the designated big sister, mentioned privately that she was a lot easier to keep track of in it. “I want to push the button,” she said.

“You’re not tall enough,” Kkit replied. They slithered over to the window next to the airlock so they could take the most space possible and ruin everyone else’s view. All four deep indigo eyes focused on the scene outside.

“Leave the rest of us some room, Kkit.” Chel turned to Elinor. “Pick me up so I can reach.”

Elinor shook her head decisively. “No, you little twerp. Last time I picked you up you pulled my hair. On purpose.”

“It was not on purpose.”

She shook her head. “My hair is not a handle.” She reached up to twirl one of the short, dark locs that stuck out all over her head. Chel changed her tactic. “Hayah, can I climb up on you?”

“If you promise not to stick your fingers in any of my ears,” Hayah responded through his voder. The Na Hesh rolled up to Elinor, who was blocking the button. She stepped back a pace, grudgingly, to let the tentacle covered ball roll into place. Hayah spoiled the little Vulcan. She was going to get entirely too used to using charm to get her way.

The four year old clambered up onto Hayah with her hands balled into awkward fists to keep her fingers from slipping into any of the hundreds of tiny tympanic membranes that nestled at the base of each of his many short tactile tentacles. She knelt on top of him and pushed the large red button beside the airlock panel. There was a mechanical thunk. That was the inner door going down. A mechanical hum followed as the air was evacuated from the lock, then a second, much smaller thunk, transmitted through the metal in the station wall, as the outer airlock door opened.

Elinor hurried over to the window, followed by Hayah, who slid on his larger handling tentacles rather than rolling this time, the better to keep from dislodging Chel. Chel leaned into the window so her forehead rested on its cool surface. Her tongue peeped out from between her lips as she leaned in closer to the transparent aluminum. Elinor pulled a face. “Don’t lick the window, twerp.”

Three of them kept their eyes glued to the window, while Hayah’s perpetual clicking and thrumming increased in loudness and frequency, a sound more felt in Elinor’s chest than heard, as he swept up and down the hallway with his sonar, watching for adults. She found herself distracted for a moment by the spectacular display outside. Glowing gases in cotton candy colors swirled around a rapidly spinning brightness just above and to the right of the station. The station wasn’t located such that the newly formed neutron star’s poles would sweep it with its jets of high energy radiation, that would be stupid, but there were unmanned stationary probes whose orbits crossed the jets to gather data that Hayah’s mother spent her days analyzing. Seven times a second, the light outside the window flickered as the remnant of Betelgeuse spun.

The marshmallows finally came into view, or at least two of them did, disappointingly far from the window. They looked like two pale marbles, so that it was nearly impossible to judge their size or see any details. “We need to cage them in something so we can watch them,” Elinor mused. “Kkit, do you still have that toy drone?”

 

It was Elinor’s father’s turn to take a long lunch so he could supervise the four of them and ensure that they ate something nutritious and completed at least a small amount of schoolwork. The four of them gathered at the table in Elinor’s quarters, she and her father seated in their chairs, Kkit draped across a horizontal bar, Chel kneeling on her chair. A booster seat had once been provided for her use, but she believed that kneeling on the chair was much more logical, by which she meant she was determined to have her way.

Hayah had his own bowl shaped seat made of a piece of heavy canvas stretched over a metal frame, though he generally ate on the floor from a large tray into which he could extrude his stomach. Elinor had been suitably impressed the first time she had seen him eat, but a few years of familiarity had bred contempt, so she generally let him go about his business in peace. She did envy him the separation between his voder assisted “voice” and his eating apparatus, though. No one ever had to remind him not to talk with his mouth full.

Her dad flicked fingers across a PADD balanced in his lap. His long legs were crossed at the ankles and rested on the end of the table in a fashion Elinor would never have been permitted to mimic. “Shoes don’t belong on the table, Bubblegum,” he would say. She decided not to call him out about it today, but she did take a surreptitious photo with her own PADD. For potential blackmail purposes.

“Hayah, I see your math and science work is progressing, but you haven’t worked on Federation Standard literacy in three days,” he remarked. “In fact,” he added, flipping back and forth between the three older children’s reports, “if we could get all of you to put some more effort into language studies, that would be great. More than great. It will be a condition for going on our trip to Tesma 5 in a couple of weeks.”

Elinor groaned. It wasn’t that she disliked language studies, especially reading and watching vids and making responses...all right, she didn’t mind making video responses, but writing responses was a slow slog through a writing program that highlighted every single spelling and grammatical error as she made it and refused to let her proceed until they were all fixed. Inevitably, practice assignments related to everything she did wrong would appear in her queue until the school program decided she had mastered the content. She had concluded that whatever her chosen career might be, writing book reports was not going to be part of it.

Math and science were different. By some miracle of educational programming and their own development, all three of the were close to on the same page in math and science. Science was covered topically, with the more advanced students just getting a little more depth, and they were all, even Chel, obsessed with the mathematics of multidimensional geometry and fractals.

“What did you all think of “Quills”?” Elinor’s dad asked.

That, of course, was not an idle question. Rene Poirier might be the station engineer, but he also held a literature degree, which meant Dad days were literature days. Hayah complained, “Mr. Poirier, can we read something from my home culture next? I don’t like trying to figure out what the writer means when she talks about what things look like.”

Dad shook his head. “We’ll get to Na Hesh literature soon, but most intelligent species in the galaxy see, so you do need to get used to the language.”

Hayah scrunched some smaller tentacles in a way that meant, in Elinor’s experience, a mild negative emotion. Sad, but not quite. Jealous? No. Hmm. “I wish I knew what seeing was like.”

“I wish I knew what sonar was like,” Kkit said. They’d been down that hallway before half a hundred times. Elinor nodded agreement.

“Every sapient species has a different sensory suite. Kkit’s compound eyes, for example, in all likelihood produce a very different subjective experience to him than mine do for me. Even Elinor and Chel see a slightly different range of colors. Let’s move on discussing the book,” her father prompted. Kkit took the lead again. “I liked that the kids in the book took the injured...what was it called? Porcupine? To their hideout to try to save it.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t know what to do and they couldn’t tell the adults,” interrupted Hayah.

“Why not?” Her father said, by way of steering the conversation.

Elinor spoke without thinking, “Because you don’t do that.”

Her dad turned to her. He stroked his fuzzy black beard dramatically. “Is that so, Elinor?”

Sigh. “Well, when adults…” How not to worry or offend? “When adults get involved, it becomes their show, and kids just have to step back and watch. Maybe you get to flip a switch, or they show you some data they’ve analyzed to see if you can find the same things they already found in it, but you’re just, um,” her explanation petered out for lack of the right phrase.

“Not real people,” Chel said. “I read the story, I get to talk too.”

Elinor found herself agreeing with Chel’s analysis. “Yeah, not real people. People in training.”

“So involving adults in their adventures robs the children of agency,” her father summarized.

Kkit bobbed their antennae in their private version of a nod. “And it feels bad enough to them that they wait too long and the porcupine dies because they didn’t get help.”

“How do you decide when it’s time to involve an adult in a situation?”

Elinor shrugged. “Well, safety issues of course. Like when Kkit and I were out on the scaffolding and found the loose fasteners on that platform.”

“Yes, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I still would prefer that you stay off the upper scaffolding.”

“See, that’s why we don’t tell you stuff!” Kkit squeaked. “Every time we say something about anything to one of you, we always get criticized. “That was a good thing you did, but don’t do this other thing, or you could do it better next time.”

“We don’t always criticize you kids.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Elinor said, ready to give Kkit some backup. “You all do.”

Hayah twisted his handling tentacles together nervously. “Well, not always. You and Stalit were helpful and took our suggestions when we all built the climbing frame on the lower scaffolding.”

Dad looked at each of them in turn. “You make some good points,” he told them all. “I expect you to expand upon those points in written work or in some kind of project in the next two days. We’ll discuss the next three chapters then. In addition, Hayah, I would like you to read the Standard translation of Gracie’s “Song of the Crossing” and compare it to the Na Hesh translation. Elinor and Kkit, you may continue reading Explorations, by Hikaru Sulu. Chel, I want you to practice decoding Standard text with the audio reader turned off. Your book is called Tiny Stowaways and describes the many small creatures that travel with spacefaring races and make their homes on ships and stations like this one.”

Her dad set the PADD down. “I need to run down to the shield generators at the other end of the station. If you stay here, please pick up after yourselves. I do not want a repeat of last week.”

Elinor answered with a casual half-salute and he responded with a dad-uncool wink and point gesture before heading out.

Kkit slithered off their perch. “I’m getting my drone. Meet you at the airlock!”

Chel ran after them. “Stop!” Elinor commanded. “You’re with me, shorty.” The smaller girl’s steps slowed, turned into pacing a circle in the vicinity of the door.

“I will find a bag we can tie to the drone for our samples. Will you collect more marshmallows and stuff?” Hayah rolled out the doorway, skirting around Chel.

Elinor opened the pantry doors. Her dad sometimes replicated ingredients for meals, rather than whole meals, so there were sometimes amusing items in the cooler compartment. As long as she replicated more before he got back, he’d be none the wiser. Eggs! What luck! She gently tucked the small package into her messenger bag. Crackers probably wouldn’t be too interesting. There were the marshmallows, and the slabs of creamy brown carob (no chocolate, just in case Chel got curious) they were planning to use to make s’mores later. Carob was not likely to do anything interesting in a vacuum. Sealed protein drinks, however...those definitely were going into the bag.

That was enough for now. Maybe the other kids would have a few things to try, too. She tossed her PADD in with the rest of the stuff, careful not to hit the eggs, and closed the door behind her. Chel followed, puppylike, at her heels.

They passed a trio of Betelgeusian researchers speaking urgently to one another in their native language. Elinor inclined her head politely as she passed the purple aliens. According to a recent Federation History reading assignment, they had evacuated their homeworld hundreds of years ago, at the same time erecting a huge radiation shield to protect nearby systems against Betelgeuse’s inevitable supernova, but they maintained interest in and ownership of the property. Several civilizations in the near vicinity owed a great debt to the Betelgeusians, who had spent many of their early spacefaring years warning their neighbors and attempting to preserve samples of local plants and animals from worlds in the path of the supernova. According to Kkit’s dad, who worked in astrophysics with Hayah’s mom, the presence of the radiation shield changed the shape of the growing nebula in ways that were interesting.

There was a bit more movement about the station in the afternoons, so they had to wait for a lull in activity to get to the airlock. Hayah, with his unique capacity to “see” around corners, served as a lookout. Elinor sat down with the materials each of them had scared up, a mesh ‘fresher bag, Kkit’s toy drone, the food Elinor had scavenged from her dad’s quarters, and a roll of electrical tape Elinor kept in her backpack at all times because you never know when you’re going to need electrical tape.

She taped the handle of the bag to the drone, so it dangled, then added two marshmallows, two eggs--very gently--and one of the protein drinks. Just as she finished, Lieutenant Douzher walked by with Dr. Ely, discussing something apparently very important and Not For Young Ears, because they shut up as soon as they saw the four of them.

“And what are you all doing out here?” Dr. Ely challenged.

Kkit responded, “Science experiment, for school.” They were such a smooth liar it worried Elinor sometimes. Although, if all of them wrote up the results their statement could, technically, become true. Ish.

Elinor allowed Kkit to place their drone in the airlock themselves and push the button this time. It was, after all, their drone. When the lock cycled open, he piloted the drone by remote to sit directly outside the window panel.

At least the marshmallows looked cool. They blew up to about three times their normal size before popping and sagging into themselves like spent balloons. The eggs did nothing that they could see; neither did the protein drink, though both items did seem to be covered with a thin layer of frost.

“Bring it in,” Hayah said. “I want to see what happened too.” Kkit steered the little device back toward the airlock, but it stopped responding after a moment and drifted right past the airlock door to clang against the side of the station and ricochet away, slowly spinning.

“The power cell is dead,” Kkit said, all four eyes on their drone, which continued to drift away from the station. “How are we going to get it now?” Their voice took on a hint of hysteria. “Mom will eat me for breakfast if I lose it!”

Hayah twisted a few tentacles around each other. “Wait. Is that just an expression or would she actually eat you?”

Kkit’s full length drooped to the floor. He curled himself around Elinor’s feet, antennae and eyes, at least the two that were on stalks, drooping. “No, not really. I’ll just wish she would.”

“Well, let’s go get it then. We can take out one of the maintenance pods.”

Elinor sighed. Hayah was absolutely completely crazy. As usual. And Kkit was being glumly adorable. How could she say no? “Okay, okay, we can take the one around the corner behind the infirmary. I’ll hack into it from my PADD.”


	2. Catastrophic Errors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The four borrow a maintenance pod to collect Kkit's drone, but turbulence in the nebula leaves them in a precarious position.

Sneaking around was harder in the afternoon, but if they were going to retrieve Kkit’s drone, it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Hayah led the way, gesturing with a handling tentacle to stop them from moving forward as another group of adults passed, conferring in worried voices. Elinor almost wanted to follow them instead, find out what was up, but again, Kkit’s drone would drift farther and farther from the station following the chaotic gravitational fields in the cloud, and they didn’t really have a hope of catching it if they waited.

Hayah curled a tentacle around her wrist to pull her forward. She linked her PADD into the maintenance pod’s system and used her dad’s password to open the door. The transport was pretty small, only designed to hold two adults, but the four of them only massed about the same as two adults, so they would fit.

They piled into the small craft, Hayah jamming himself into the pilot’s seat, with Elinor strapped into the copilot’s spot with Chel on her lap, the harness clipped around both of them. Kkit curled up in the back, poking their head out between the seats. Elinor parked her PADD on the panel between the seats to pull up the security protocols. A red flash on her screen showed new protocols had been put in place. 

“There’s new security on the pods. It will take a minute to crack,” she told Hayah. Had Dad discovered her back doors into the station systems? Didn’t look like it. The protocols had been put in place five days ago. Maybe something to do with the quiet, urgent discussions abruptly silenced every time the kids came within earshot. 

“Let me know when to power up.” Hayah said. Elinor would have to see if Hayah could put his 500 ears to the task of finding out what was going on. She got to work accessing the backdoor she’d programmed into the system. It took a couple of minutes, but she got the system powered up. 

“Engaging stealth subroutine,” she said, and popped the outer airlock. It was more playacting than anything else, reporting everything she did on her PADD to her friends as though they were some kind of Starfleet science team, but it sounded a lot better than “hacking Dad’s security program so the station wouldn’t know it had launched a pod.”

“Acknowledged,” Hayah responded, putting on his best “serious explorer” voice.

The pod shot clear of the station, and they were drifting alone in the nebula in their tiny craft, swirls of brilliantly colored radiation all around them. Hayah entered the code that translated the information on the screen into the barely audible fizzing and clicks that he used to “see.” “Telemetry on the drone?”

Kkit rattled off a code. “That’s the tracker frequency.”

“Got it.” Hayah tapped it into the pod’s nav system.  
Kkit read the coordinates on the display. “How did it get all the way out there?”

Hayah flipped up a few dozen sensory tentacles noncommittally. “Currents are really weird out here. Anything can end up anywhere in the nebula if it floats unpowered for long enough.”

“Do we have enough power to retrieve the drone and return?” Chel asked.

Hayah checked the gauge. “Looks like it. Heading out.” He wrapped handling tentacles around controls designed for humanoid hands and guided the pod along the gravity waves near the station, guided by contour lines picked out in green light on the front screen. 

They followed a path through narrow contour lines that made a pattern almost like a tube on their screen. As they entered the front end of the tube, the pod started to spin on its axis and race through the channel like they were on a sort of roller coaster, though the inertial dampeners prevented any of the movements to be felt inside the pod. 

The channel spit them into a region of high turbulence that flipped them around some more. Hayah piloted the craft into a quieter area to wait for the sensors to settle down. “Where are we? I can’t see the station,” Kkit said, nervousness creeping into their already high pitched voice.

Elinor consulted the sensors. “I have the probe. 350 meters bearing 30.35.60.”

“Copy,” Hayah replied. He set the pod back in motion, this time avoiding the fastest streams. 

Hayah maneuvered the pod until it drifted alongside the small drone, then grabbed it with the pod’s robot arms and tucked it into the payload bin. “Mission accomplished, time to go home. What time is it?”

“1640 station time,” KKit read off the chrono on the control panel. “Day shift ends at 1700. We will be missed.”

“Then we will have to return home quickly,” Hayah said. He tapped a few keys, bringing up the display showing the gravitational eddies permeating the nebula. He raised two handling tentacles to trace over the green lines of light. “This is our most efficient pathway, I think.”

“You’re the pilot, Hayah,” Elinor said. She adjusted Chel’s bony rear end on her lap. “Let’s go.”

“Computer, engage inertial feedback. I want to be able to feel what I’m doing.” The path Hayah picked out was, if anything, more of a roller coaster ride than the first. The inertial dampeners somatic signaling system kicked in, artificially adjusting the internal gravity to give Hayah feedback about the twists and turns the pod was enduring. Kkit slammed forward, hitting their head against the center console. They squealed, but shook themself and readjusted their pincer grip on the chair backs. They flipped and twisted for another ten seconds, then Hayah said a word his voder chose not to translate.

He stopped pushing the ship forward. It shot through one more corkscrew and stilled as Hayah pulled the inertial brakes. “We just went the wrong way,” he said.

“So go the right way, no drama,” Elinor said.

“Yes, drama,” Hayah said. “We’ve gone a hundred klicks in the wrong direction. We were moving fast back there.” 

Sitting beside him, watching his sensory tentacles pale and begin to vibrate, she realized what he was saying, and why he hadn’t just come out and said it. She glanced down at Chel on her lap, then up at the power gauge.

“There is not enough power to pilot the pod home,” Chel confirmed, one finger reaching out to touch the display.

Hayah’s handling tentacles released the controls and fell to his sides, limp. “We’re going to…”

Elinor cut him off. “We’re going to call for help. We’ll probably be grounded for the rest of our lives, but we’re pretty stuck. Opening a link to the station.” Heavy static greeted them. “Computer, boost the signal. BPNOP, do you read. This is maintenance pod 3. We need immediate assistance. Chisi, are you there?”

No response. She tried again. “BPNOP, This is maintenance pod 3. We’re in trouble out here. Do you copy?”

And a third time. Still nothing. She turned back to Hayah. “We’re going to figure this out. Its 1655. They will figure out we all are missing pretty quickly, then they will come and get us.”

“They won’t know where to look,” Hayah said.

Elinor checked more displays. “Life support will run for another four hours. Five if we let it get cold in here. That’s plenty of time for us to be found.”

“I’m cold now,” Chel said.

“We’re not turning the heat down any more yet, Chel. Kkit, you okay back there?” Kkit didn’t respond. “Hey, we’re going to be fine.”

“We don’t have four hours, Elinor,” Hayah said. Elinor looked up at the screen. They were drifting in the direction of one of the neutron star’s polar jets. “If we use power to evade the jet, we cut the length of time life support will function. If we don’t, we pass through it in,” he paused, “Thirty minutes.”

“Computer, plot a course that maximizes survival time,” Elinor said.

“Uploading course to pod system,” her PADD said.

Hayah examined the course that was laid out. “There is no burn that will move the pod out of the path of the pulsar’s jet while retaining more than thirty minutes of life support. A three second burn maximizes survival time at one hour, ten minutes.” Hayah rested shaking tentacles on the controls, then withdrew them. “Run the burn on autopilot,” he said.

The burn complete, the ship went dark. “Shifting to energy conservation mode. Contact with pulsar stream in 71 minutes.”

Chel balled her hands into fists. “I am not going to cry. I am in control. I am a Vulcan. Vulcans don’t cry.”

Kkit pushed their head forward, so that a good eighteen inches of them lay between Hayah and Elinor on the center console. Elinor reached over to lay a hand on their smooth, waxy carapace. “Now we wait. They’ll find us.” Please find us, Elinor thought. Someone, anyone, find us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments, questions, quibbles, and suggestions. We're still getting ramped up here.
> 
> A note about Chel: Chel is patterned very closely after my six year old daughter, who I swear is Vulcan somewhere in her ancestry. I treat her as developmentally a mathematically gifted six, chronologically four, and sized closer to a young three.
> 
> Elinor Poirier is the same person who will author the memo in "Memorandum" about thirty years after this story.
> 
> I'm on tumblr with the same name.


	3. Wayfinder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A noncorporeal pioneer kid settles a brand new nebula with her parents. But there's nobody here to play with.

The child was small, and had stayed small for too long. Home was a delightfully crowded, noisy, busy place, but home was filled to bursting and sometimes there weren’t enough high energy particles in the cloud to keep everyone well fed. So the mother weaving sent one pair of mothers to investigate a supernova rippling through fastspace. They were gone so long that the child passed entirely from her infancy into her childhood without them, and knew them only through their messages sent rippling through the weaving, faint and far away.

For as long as they were gone, their return was brief. The mothers had consulted through the weaving and the decision to leave had already been made. The child had barely any time to say goodbye to her friends before her mothers gathered her into a travel nest to begin a long journey through fastspace to the newborn nebula. Even entertained by the stories told by her mothers, the child was bored and restless, her ennui only relieved by rare glimpses of tiny denselife zipping past inside the hollow rocks they made their homes.

The Betelegeuse nebula was a beautiful thing, but so very empty. The child arrived, borne in her nest of mothers, a decade of mothers that gave her shape and substance, education and far too many rules. There were no other children here. There were no other people here to speak of. The space was rugged, the fastspace full of twists and turns and rippling turbulence that were a delight to play in, the slowspace rich with high energy radiation and exotic particles with which she stuffed herself until she grew quite large indeed, pleasing her mothers no end. But she was so very lonely.

So lonely that, as time passed, she crept closer and closer to the hollow rock full of denselife her mothers insisted she not approach. She could feel them in there, so many in such a tiny space, how could they all fit, there had to be forty of them in there, thoughts curled into tight, separate little balls like their dense little bodies. Their hollow rock swept the nebula with bands of energy which tasted blandly sweet, but were worth a snack now and then, and if she absorbed one they obligingly sent more her way.

She had not been brave enough to peek inside or touch the little denselife when they ventured out in even smaller hollow pebbles to navigate the slowspace around the nebula. Instead she moved her substance politely out of their way, assuming that, given that they did not pass through and into one another, they might find passing through her distasteful as well. Besides, her few accidental brushes with the ones in the pebbles had felt distinctly adultish. 

She had never felt one cry before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days I will write the Wayfinder Consortium Infodump of Doom.
> 
> It will probably take the form of a school paper written by one of those darn kids...
> 
> Still like comments. Still drop hints and spoilers when I respond. :)


	4. Scout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as all seems lost, the children obtain help from an unlikely source.

There was little to do but stare out the viewscreen and wait. It took almost no time for the heat in the pod to dissipate into space. The temperature stopped falling at 5 degrees Celsius, kept above freezing by the minimal life support setting on the pod. Chel shivered on Elinor’’s lap. “Tuck your legs up and put your hands in your lap,” Elinor instructed. She wrapped her arms around the snowsuit clad girl to hold in just a little more heat. 

Elinor had been avoiding looking at the chrono, but her eyes raked across it by accident when she was checking the temperature. Only four minutes had passed. The nebula was turning bluish purple. Perhaps the pod was turning slowly toward a bluer part of the nebula.

“Is there something else we can do?” Kkit asked.

“I can’t think of anything. Hayah?” Elinor said.

Hayah didn’t answer. He was curled in as tight on himself as he could be, given that he was already spherical. “I don’t want to die here.”

“We’re not going to die. We’re going to get cold, and bored, and grounded,” Elinor said firmly. No matter how many times she said it to them, or to herself, the fear began to settle into her stomach like a rock, colder than the air and her tingling toes. There was a washed out, not-herself feeling to some of that fear she hadn’t recognized at first. “Chel, put a lid on,” she said absently, then, “Never mind, peanut, I’m right here.” 

Chel turned sideways to better burrow into Elinor’s chest. A heaviness settled into the back of Elinor’s head and into her ears. She patted Chel’s back. They stared out the window at pale violet swirls, dotted with stars. She could feel pincer feet creeping up onto her lap beside Chel. It was unfortunate that Kkit was both the most cuddly and least cuddleable person she knew. “Do you see any pictures in the clouds, you two?”

“I see a chair,” Kkit trilled.

“I see a porcupine,” Chel sniffled. “I see...I see a person.” She squirmed toward the window slightly, projecting interest. Had Chel seen something that might help them?

“Chel, what do you mean?”

“Over there! Hey, hey we’re over here!” Chel yelled, as if the nebula were going to hear her. The words echoed in Elinor’s head.

“Chel, no one’s going to be able to hear us, sound doesn’t carry in space.” She didn’t quite hear herself finish the last word before she was swallowed up in joy/concern/curiosity. It was too much, too bright and everything dissolved into pain that lasted either a few seconds or a hundred years, she was never sure. Scared/worried/sorry and the pressure softened, didn’t release her but held itself to a level that didn’t quite hurt.

Hayah was the first of them to push words through the confusion of light and noise. “Is this the pulsar? Are we dying?”

No, it’s too soon, Elinor thought she said.

Chel was the first to get her bearings. She went straight after the cloud of sound, light, pressure...Person, dummy she definitely said to the rest of them. Twerp. “You’re doing it wrong,” she shouted out the window and everything got very quiet and not quite real anymore.

The pod dissolved away and she was left floating in the cloud, which made no sense because between the radiation and the hard vacuum she ought to be dead, but she wasn’t. The cloud was a person so big it was in some sense a place, and they were inside the place, or the person, or so she thought. Everybody’s a place, someone added, with an arch certainty that could only have come from Chel.

Elinor was still inside out and upside down. Chel floated in purple cloudspace, but it wasn’t actually Chel, it was more like the idea of Chel, with the idea of Hayah drifting next to her. She couldn’t find Kkit. The cloud entity bobbed nearby like a candle flame refracting through violet crystal, though they were also inside it, confusingly enough.

Query. Afraid?

Elinor thought it through a minute. Either they were dead, in which case this was some weird dream, or they were inside a noncorporeal entity that couldn’t communicate well in Standard. Also somewhere Kkit was still scared, and she couldn’t find him and... Chel, go find, Kkit, would you?

Shruggy sort of agreement.

Elinor tried to get her thoughts organized so she could push them out one by one. Urgency. Pulsar jet. Pain. Darkness. Help get away.

How? Tiny balls of light. In a rock. A smooth, silver rock...the station! 

Hayah caught it a fraction of a second before she did. Station, he sent, picturing it as clearly as he could. Yes, we’re from the station. 

Duh, thought the entity. 

Elinor turned her attention to Hayah. We need to tell it how to get us home. Any ideas?   
Hayah built a series of images made of contours and textures that together built the idea that they needed to be pushed away from the jet and toward the station, but also contained some idea of how to do it, some impression of currents and particles in motion. The entity considered, suggested he repeat himself, and somewhere along the line Elinor realized he was thinking in Na Hesh. No wonder he was such a good pilot, if that was how his language worked. 

Good on you, Hayah.

She gathered Chel back to her as soon as she felt her nearby, sheltering Kkit. Good girl, she said...projected? Chel sparkled pride, then stifled it in favor of control. 

Hayah and the entity conferred on technicalities. She got the impression of a couple of failed attempts to shift the balance of particles striking the pod, then success, felt through Hayah and the entity, Scout it called itself, rather than through any connection to the outside world in which the pod and presumably their bodies still sat.

Hayah shifted his attention back to the rest of them, followed by a shyly bobbing Scout. Friends? The violet sparkle seemed to say. Elinor gathered them up to her, Scout first, then Hayah. If we live, she promised, friends. If not, she thought, at least the last hour of their lives wouldn’t be dull.

There was something childlike about the entity. She wondered at that, felt/saw a circle of entities, mothers, the word plucked out of her mind. Ten of them. You have ten moms? You only have one? Dad not mom, she corrected, but the idea of gender was lost on the entity.

Explaining what it was like to be tiny and made of mostly water and carbon chains was a challenging puzzle, but the entity was fascinated by their halting attempts to describe their lives on the station. Elinor was in the midst of trying to explain what a raspberry was when they were suddenly not inside the entity anymore.

Her body fizzed with transporter energy, barely noticed. She was preoccupied with the feeling that something was being pulled out and away, thinned out in four lines like chewing gum stretched until it was so thin it was almost invisible and about to break. It hurt almost as much as those first moments swallowed up in the entity, in Scout, had.

She opened her eyes to find herself sitting on a transporter pad with her arms wrapped around Chel, turned her head to vomit, and fell into blackness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to keep going here. As I may have mentioned, after this seed story, there is a second part to the series with some pestering of Deanna Troi, First Contact negotiations, Picard being awkward with children, and other TNG fun.


	5. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elinor awakens in the infirmary to adults with a lot of difficult questions.

Elinor was flat on her back. Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, and she was having a hard time putting together how she had ended up wherever she was. She slid her hands back and forth where they lay at her sides under a heavy blanket. Smooth, cool sheets. She opened her eyes, then shut them immediately against the bright lights in the ceiling.

She remembered the transporter sparkle first. Transported from...the maintenance pod they had taken out to get Kkit’s drone. How long had she been lying in a bed? Were the rest of them also hurt, or unconscious? Worst yet, had any of the rest of them started talking? How were they ever going to get their story straight if they all woke up at different times? What was their story going to be?

She was dead anyway. She occupied herself for a few minutes longer wondering just how grounded she was going to be. Confined to their quarters? Almost certainly. What else could Dad take from her? He could say that she couldn’t hang out with Hayah and Kkit anymore. He could take her net privileges away for everything but schoolwork. He could do all that...forever, she guessed.

“Elinor, can you hear me?” It was Corpsman Bhattacharya. She considered ignoring him. “Elinor, your neuro scans show you’re conscious. So you had better answer me or I’m going to have to do some more tests to find out why you can’t.”

Not really interested in starting the interrogation just yet, she thought. Glob, her head hurt.

“Some of those tests will not be fun at all.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“I will get Stalit to come down here to find out for sure if you are awake, young lady.”

Well, that was baloney, because if she was in the infirmary, then so was Chel and he was almost certainly already down here. Wait, that didn’t help her. “Okay, okay, I’m awake. Is everybody else okay?”

“All of you are alive. Hayah is still being treated for radiation exposure, he’s more susceptible than the other three of you, and Chel was extremely hypothermic. We’re watching her closely, but I think she’s going to be okay.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like my dad is going to kill me as soon as he finds out I’m not already dead.”

“Well, that’s not my problem. I’m sure he will have plenty of questions for you. How are you feeling, physically.”  
She kept her eyes tightly squinched shut. “Worst headache ever. Including the time I fell off the scaffolding.”

“Open your eyes.”

“It’s too bright.”

“Dim the lights,” Corpsman Bhattacharya told the room. The room grew less bright. She opened her eyes. Still hurt. “Squeeze my hand.”

She squeezed his hand. He made hmmm noises and made her squeeze the other hand, then ran a pen along the soles of her feet, which tickled. “Can you sit up?”

Elinor raised her head, which sent hot needles stabbing behind her eyes. She laid it back down. “No.”

“That’s okay, for now. Ah, Rene, she’s awake. I would recommend you table any discussion of consequences for later, however.” She moved her eyes without turning her head to see Dad standing beside her with the most severely unreadable look on his face. Dad squeezed her hand. Tight.

“What happened, Bubblegum?” he asked. “Never mind, we’ll talk more when you’re feeling a little better.”

Her face got hot. “I’m so sorry, Daddy…” There wasn’t anything else she could say. Not that being sorry mattered anyway.

“Shh...shh. I know.” Dad tried to take the device Corpsman Bhattacharya was holding out of his hands. “How are her scans now?”

“Still abnormal. When we got the four of them out of the pod, there was plenty of oxygen remaining. Radiation exposure was sufficient to cause damage without treatment, but they shouldn’t have been feeling the effects yet. In short, there was no reason for any of them to lose consciousness when we beamed them out, much less to be out for...two hours, now.”

“And the others?”

“Kkit’s awake. Hayah’s still in the decontamination chamber, so I sedated him. Chel’s still out, but she was pretty cold when we got to her.”

Her father continuted, “I’ve run diagnostics on the transporter. Nothing unusual showing up there.”

“And the atmospheric effects in the nebula?”

“Not now,” Dad said. “Stay put Elinor. We’ll talk shortly.”

He took Corpsman Bhattacharya out of earshot.

The purple cloud! Scout! Had Hayah or Kkit said anything about it...her...yet? That pulled, stretched feeling when they went through the transporter...had it tried to transport part of their new friend’s body in the beam? Could Scout be hurt? Dead? Were they going to tell their parents about who saved them?

It wasn’t even a question of whether honesty was the best policy. If she didn’t say anything, and Kkit or Hayah did, then she’d be in trouble. If she did mention Scout and Hayah or Kkit didn’t, either the adults would think she was lying, or they would know the others were, and they’d still be in trouble.

Scout and her parents were hiding in the cloud. They hadn’t contacted anyone at the Federation owned station, nor, she assumed, had they talked to the Betelgeusians. Why? Were they scared? Were they planning something they didn’t want...what was Scout’s word...denselife to know about? Did they think that they would be forced to leave if they were discovered? Would they be? 

She thought she remembered Scout hadn’t been where she was supposed to be either. If she told the adults about her, would they find a way to get her in trouble with her parents? It would figure. She turned on her side, slowly and carefully, trying not to make the headache worse. Sh was pretty sure she dozed.

 

“All right, Elinor, time to try to sit up.”

She obeyed. The room swam and her eyes browned out for a second, then cleared. “Sip some water,” she was told. She took the straw, sipped, swallowed. “You’re looking better. The station commander and your father have some questions for you.”

Her dad and Stalit were standing beside the bed. Her dad asked Bhattacharya, “Have the neuro scans normalized?”

“There are still some odd echoes. I’ve sent the tracings to the remote physician service at Starbase 4.”

Stalit stared her down, face perfectly still. Oh, he was mad. Really mad. Elinor swallowed. “In your own words, please recount the events which led to your being found adrift in a maintenance pod with Hayah, Kkit, and my daughter this afternoon.”

Best not lie then. Not that the truth would help, but if she lied they might be able to make it worse for her. She could put one over on her dad from time to time, but Stalit was much too scary to lie to. “We lost Kkit’s drone out the airlock. He was afraid he’d get in trouble, so we took out a pod to retrieve it, but it had gone kind of far away. Hayah flew us to it, but we got turned around on the way back and ran out of power. Um. We had to burn some of the reserve power for life support because we were drifting into the jet. Um.”

The part they weren’t going to believe. “So, we couldn’t call you because there was too much interference. We tried.”

Stalit frowned with just his eyes. He was talented that way. “The telemetry recordings from the pod show a trajectory that cannot be reconciled with currents in the nebula and your available power supply.”

“That was when we met Scout.” She felt like she was betraying her. Out of all of them, she didn’t have to get in trouble.

“Scout?” Stalit prompted.

“Yeah. She’s a purple cloud thing. In the nebula. She’s a kid, I think. Older than Kkit. Maybe as old as Hayah, I’m not sure. She and Hayah worked out how to push the pod back toward the station. I wasn’t very clear on that, piloting’s not really my thing. The pod was inside her for a while. She’s kind of...large.”

“There is a cloudform noncorporeal alien living in the nebula. A child, no less?” her father asked, trying not to sound like he thought she was making it up.

“Yes.” She stared down at her lap. 

“May I ask how you established communications with the alien?” Stalit said.

“Chel yelled out the window at it? It all gets confusing after that.”

“Please make an effort to describe your recollections precisely.”

“I told you, I’m not sure. I’m not even sure how much of what I remember really happened. It was all kind of cartoony. I mean, not like an actual cartoon. Maybe I imagined the whole thing.”

“Something unusual happened out there,” her dad said.

Elinor thought. “After Hayah showed Scout how to move the pod toward the station, we just kind of talked about stuff. Everything was fine until we were transported. That much I remember. I’ve been through transporters before, and this time it felt different. Like I was being pulled to pieces.” She twisted her fingers in her lap. “Does that help?”

“Perhaps,” Stalit said.

“Did the other kids say anything about Scout?”

“Hayah has been sedated and has not yet been questioned. Kkit chose to remain silent on the subject. Chel is not yet conscious.” Stalit paused. “It will be necessary to continue your questioning shortly. Please remain here. I must meditate, then continue your debriefing when I return.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door. “Rene, please inform me if Chel awakens.”

“I will.” Her dad didn’t just look mad. He looked...tired.

“Why did Stalit leave? Does he hate me now? Are we going to have to leave the station?”

“No. He is disappointed in your behavior, that’s for sure. And he’s worried about Chel. Think about it, Elinor, Chel is only four. She may act older sometimes, but she’s a little kid. You were responsible for her, and you went on an incredibly dangerous, ill conceived adventure and took her with you.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy. Maybe I should go away to boarding school or something. That would fix it. Then neither of you would have to look at me anymore. I mean Stalit is always in control of himself and he couldn’t even stay long enough to finish asking questions without going to meditate. He hates me.”

“Bubblegum, that’s not it. I mean, yes, Stalit is angry. He’d never admit it aloud, but I’ve rarely seen him this upset. But it’s not the kind of angry you don’t come back from. It’s more like...do you remember when Hayah built the rope ladder to the upper scaffold and you all tried it and you fell on your head?”

“I know it happened, but no, I don’t actually remember, dad. I lost most of that week, remember?”

“I was pretty mad at Hayah, but I did get over it eventually. He’ll get over it, but right now he has to meditate to try to put it behind him so he can do what he has to do without hurting you.”

Wait, what? Oh. “If I think about it, I bet I can describe what happened better so he doesn’t have to...be inconvenienced.”

“Bubblegum, as of...five minutes ago...your behavior and its consequences aren’t the most important thing happening on this station by a long shot. We are officially in a first contact situation, and you and the other kids are right in the middle of it. We need to know exactly what happened out there.”

“What about Chel?”

“Chel isn’t awake yet. Hayah and Kkit are nonhumanoid, which makes matters more difficult. Stalit knows you better than he does them. You’re the best choice.”

“What if I don’t want him to poke around in my head?” Especially if he has to go off and pretend he doesn’t hate me. Like that works. Not gonna cry, not gonna cry. Grounded. She was just supposed to be grounded, that was the deal, universe.

“Stalit won’t force you to do anything. But you need to think about the consequences, and your responsibility in this situation. I trust you will make the right decision. Think you can eat something?”

“Not now,” she snipped. She crossed her arms and stared at her toes until Bhattacharya returned to wave humming equipment over her again. “Should’ve kept my mouth shut.”


	6. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Commander Stalit questions Elinor about the circumstances surrounding their encounter with Scout.

The infirmary was just big enough for four cots and the space to walk between them. It didn’t even have proper biobeds, just pop up portable units that were stowed in drawers most of the time. Hayah was propped in a canvas bowl chair under a sort of pink lamp, his handling tentacles carefully arranged around him in the chair. Kkit was curled up into a spiral on the cot next to her. His dad lay wound around him in a larger spiral. Chel lay nearby under a couple of layers of warming blankets. She turned over on her cot, making sleepy little girl noises. Dad left his perch at Elinor’s side to check on her. She mumbled something at him and pulled the blanket over her head.

“I told Stalit I would let him know when Chel awoke,” he told Corpsman Bhattacharya. “Be good,” he told Elinor on the way out the door.

Elinor was left behind in the infirmary. She wanted to go see if Chel was okay, but she didn’t want to get caught standing over her. Stalit probably didn’t want her anywhere near his daughter, and she couldn’t risk making him angrier than he probably already was.

Once he knew what happened he’d realize just how all her fault it really was and throw her out the nearest airlock.

He probably wouldn’t, not really. But only because it would hurt Dad.

Running away from home was beginning to seem like a viable option. Too bad there was only one warp capable ship associated with the station, a small pinnace that could be used to explore parts of the nebula, but was really there just in case something dangerous happened inside the neutron star and they had to evacuate.

She could hide, maybe down under the low scaffolding that held up the radio telescope dish, where it was hard for an adult sized body to fit. But that would only delay the inevitable, and she’d show everyone just how immature and irresponsible she really was. On the other hand, if she disappeared for a few hours, Stalit would pick on Hayah or Kkit instead of her and oh she was disloyal on top of everything. The least she could do when this whole mess was her own fault was to take one for the team. If only she weren’t absolutely sure she would die of shame. She curled back into a ball on her cot and covered her hot, wet face with a wadded bit of blanket.

 

Stalit returned. “Elinor?” he said. She heard him before she saw him because she was still crying into the remarkably unabsorbent infirmary blanket. Her nose was running and she was sure her face was all red and puffy. She tried never to let him see her cry, because Chel wasn’t supposed to cry and she was a lot older than Chel.

“I’m sorry,” she said for what felt like the hundredth time. And then she was sobbing again. She rubbed the blanket across her face, but all it did was smear tears and snot all over her.

“I know.” He stepped up close to the bed and sort of tilted her forward into his uniform front, wrapping his arms around her. Stalit was hugging her. He had hugged her, as far as she could remember in the four years she’d known him, once. It was exactly as awkward as she remembered. She bawled into his uniform shirt, covering it with tears and boogers and who knew what grossness.

Elinor mumbled into his shirt. “Are we going to have to move out?”

“Elinor.” Stalit took a half step away and turned serious. More serious. “Your father and I have discussed the situation as it stands. You do understand that we are not roommates, nor have we been for quite some time.”

She blinked at him. He really thought she was that dumb? 

“At the time we decided to combine households, Chel’s mother had just left her with me, and I was not equipped to raise an infant on my own. As neither of us had partners, sharing parenting duties was only logical. Over the years, our relationship has evolved such that we would find it...unacceptable...to be parted from each other. And you and Chel have been raised as, for all practical purposes, sisters.”

“Are you going to send me away, then?”

“No. However,” he said. “Expecting you to look after Chel, as you have done so much of the time for the past couple of years, was too much to ask of you at your age. We will be looking into better options for ensuring that you are both properly supervised. At this moment, though, I am speaking to you in my role as the station commander. You have, for better or worse, taken the point position in a first contact situation, whether you intended to or not. The more we understand about these aliens and their motives, the more likely we are to be able to establish friendly relations with them. Do you understand?”

She was going to cry again. Stupid. She flapped her hands insistently, trying to force the tears not to fall, and failed. “I understand,” she said, cry-voiced. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Do I frighten you that much?”

“No. Yes. Only because I know how much you must hate me now.” She stole a glance at Chel, cocooned under her blankets with just her hands and the top of her head visible.

“I could not hate you.”

“Because hate is an emotion, right?” She hated the sound of her voice, all whiny squeaky and hitching breaths.

“No.” He paused, like he was looking for words. “Just no.”

She sniffled some more. It felt like another wave of sobbing was coming on that she wasn’t going to be able to stop. “I thought we were all going to die,” she whispered, and there she went again. Glob, what a mess she was. A giant bawling baby mess. Forget Vulcan control, she wasn’t even behaving like a self respecting nine year old human. Probably. She’d never met another human anywhere near her age.

“But you didn’t, and now you’re here. We think your friend is outside the station. Help us figure out how to talk to her.”

“Wait, she’s here?” She rubbed her sleeve across her eyes and tried to slip off the cot. 

Stalit caught her elbow to return her to her place. “You are in no condition to leave this room.”

“Okay.” She managed to bite her lip on the next bout of sobs for a second.

“It might be less frightening if you close your eyes.”

She nodded, squeezed her eyes shut, and to her immense embarrassment, started crying. Again. Fingers on her cheeks. Her gross, wet, sticky cheeks, but she didn’t really have all that long to think about it because she fell right into a sort of angular, crystal sparkling on water version of the place that wasn’t really a place they had all created with Scout.

That answers one question, she heard. I would review your memory of the events you describe, beginning when you powered down the pod. Uh huh, she thought, and there she was, back inside the memory, but a little at a remove from it, so that she didn’t actually think she was going to die like she had at the time.

Instead, she paid a lot more attention to how it felt when Scout appeared beside the ship, her at first agonizing attempts to contact them, and a fair amount on how they had killed time until the transporter carried them away. Looking for cultural information about Scout and her mothers, she realized.

And attempting to determine the effect on you children. Beaming you out of a full meld with a creature that powerful may have damaged you. Her initial attempts to communicate may have done some harm as well. However, I am no mind healer. I believe it will be necessary to request one be sent here to assess each of you.

The strings that stretched all out, she thought. Pulling us apart.

Yes. The...strings, as you call them...remain attached, however. All of you to the entity and I believe also each of you to each other, but as excepting Chel you are all mind blind, you might not be aware of them.

Chel did good, Elinor thought. 

Yes, remarkably so, given her lack of experience. Find your breath.

She turned her attention to her breathing. Stalit had taught all four of them some simple meditation techniques, which he insisted they turn to when they fought or otherwise disturbed the peace. She opened her eyes to see Stalit still standing next to her with the front of his uniform all wet. He looked down at himself. “I will change clothes and return. We will discuss Scout with some members of the science team at that time. If she attempts to contact you before then, you may speak with her, but tell Corpsman Bhattacharya as soon as possible. While the impression you provide of the alien is generally benevolent, it is possible she could become dangerous if angered. Do not, however, seek her out.”

“I understand,” she said. And she intended to follow instructions this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case any of you are thinking that Elinor is overreacting, I pulled an even worse bout of horrifyingly embarrassing crying over a throat culture at the same age. Granted, I am tactile defensive and cotton swabs have no business being shoved down somebody's throat, but still.
> 
> Totally nine, I promise.


	7. Grounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hayah and Elinor wait to be escorted back to their quarters by a responsible adult after their unauthorized trip into the nebula.

Corpsman Bhattacharya released Kkit from the infirmary first, to their mother, who caught them up along her length and half dragged them along.  “Talk to you later, Elinor,” Kkit shouted behind them.  Their mother slithered all the faster, the tighter than usual S curve of her body forming a visual signal of her wrath.   

Elinor hopped off the bed to sit by Hayah on the floor.  They had both been declared sufficiently recovered to leave, but were waiting to be escorted home by responsible adults.  Had he seen her crying like a giant baby? If he had, at least he hadn’t mentioned it yet.  

“Want to play Concentration?” Hayah asked.

“Guess so.  You grounded from electronics, too?”

“Yeah.  Same as you.  Adult in the room at all times and no electronics.  The station AI doesn’t respond to me either.”  He twisted his tentacles into an anxious braid.  “Mom is disappointed in me.  I have to be better than girls my age so I can show I’m not half a person.  You know how she is.”

“You’re not half a person,” Elinor assured almost automatically.  She’d heard him worry about that before just because he was male.  He had half as many genes and half as many parents as a female Na Hesh, so he was only half a person.  It was how his species felt about males, but it was stupid.  “Wait a minute,” Elinor said.  “I knew we weren’t going to be able to use our tablets or the holosuite, but the station AI?  We won’t be able to get food out of the replicators or turn the lights on and off or anything.  We’ll have to ask an adult for everything!”

“Mother wants to make a strong statement of her disappointment.  Come on, let’s play.”  They had modified the game years ago, when Chel was two, slapping the floor with two hands or tentacles, clapping, then raising both hands to snap their fingers.  Hayah did have fingers, three per handling tentacle, which he could snap like humanoid fingers.  

Slap, clap, snap.  “Let’s play,” they said together.  

Slap, clap, snap.  “Concentration.”  

Slap, clap, snap.  “No repeats.”  

Slap, clap, snap.  “No hesitations.”  

Slap, clap, snap.  “I go first,” Hayah said, by himselfSlap, clap, snap.   “Because I’m smarter.”   

“Hey!”  Elinor protested through the clapping rhythm.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Category,” Hayah continued, unrelenting. 

Slap, clap, snap.  “Stars.”

Slap, clap, snap.  “Theta Orionis,” Hayah said.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Aldebaran,” Elinor returned.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Sol,”  Hayah added.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Epsilon Eridani.”

Slap, clap, snap.  “Alnilath.”

Slap, clap, snap.  “Antares.”  Elinor was pretty sure there was a song or something.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Betelgeuse.”  Hayah said.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Challenge,” Elinor said, still keeping the rhythm with her hands.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Evidence?”

Slap, clap, snap.  “Dead star.”

Slap, clap, snap.  “Neutron stars count,” Hayah argued.

Slap, clap, snap.  “Fiiiine.”  As usual, arguing caused her to lose focus, and she missed her next turn.  

“I win.” Hayah said.

“Yeah, well, you said Betelgeuse on purpose.”  Elinor checked over her shoulder to see Bhattacharya at a console, talking urgently at the screen, his voice just a little too low for her to make out the words.

A swishing sound from Chel’s bed alerted her.  She turned just in time to see Chel slide off the bed to land awkwardly on the floor.  She made her way toward them, one hand braced against the wall, then dropped to her knees and crawled over to them.  “Scout’s here, but she’s hiding,” she told them.

“I thought she was outside the station,” Elinor whispered.

“She’s big, remember?”  Chel bent forward to rest her cheek on the carpeted floor and closed her eyes.

“What are you doing?”  Hayah asked her.

“Don’t feel good.  Dizzy.”  It wasn’t like Chel to speak in sentence fragments.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” Hayah suggested.

“Okay,” Chel said, then crawled into Elinor’s lap instead.  Elinor checked that her sleeves and leggings were properly pulled down and lifted her hands out of the way until Chel settled herself with her head against Elinor’s chest.

“Chel,” Elinor reminded her as an increasingly familiar vertigo washed over her.  Kid was not supposed to be running around unshielded.  “Put a lid on, willya?”

“Don’t want to.”  

“You feel like you have a fever.”  She raised her voice.  “Corpsman Bhattacharya, I think Chel has a fever.”

Corpsman Bhattacharya hurried over to them, scooped Chel back up onto the bed, and ran his handheld scanner over her.  “She does have a bit of a fever.  Back to bed with you, sweetie,” he told her, pulling the blanket back up over her.  He frowned at the scanner’s tiny screen and returned with it to his desk.

Elinor rested her back on the wall next to where Hayah sat.  She whispered, “Hayah, can you tell what they’re saying from here?  I don’t want to get caught eavesdropping.”

“I don’t think we’ll get in more trouble from listening,” Hayah said.

She muttered back, “Yeah, but they’ll stop talking.  I don’t like it when they don’t tell us stuff, and they’ve been not telling us stuff for a while now.  And turn down your voder volume.”

Hayah responded more quietly, “Okay, I’ll try.”  They were both quiet, listening, for another couple of minutes, until Bhattacharya finished his call.  

Hayah told her, “Chel has some disease they have to get a special doctor for.  We all have brain damage or something called traumatic induction.  Or maybe we just might have it, I couldn’t tell.  And the Enterprise is coming here.”

“A real starship?  Why?  It can’t be just because of Chel.”  If it was just because of Chel, she was in a lot worse shape than Elinor had assumed.  “I don’t have brain damage.  I’m fine.”  Except for the headache behind her eyes and the funny ghostly haloes around things.  They should go away soon, right?

Hayah flipped a couple dozen sensory tentacles upward, shrugging.  “Maybe because of Scout?  Stalit did say that our meeting her was a first contact situation.  Maybe they want to study her.”

“Or meet her parents.  But we don’t even know if she’s ever coming back.”

“She lives in the nebula.  And you remember how lonely she was.  I can’t imagine her staying away forever.”  Elinor hoped she wouldn’t stay away forever and that she hadn’t gotten in trouble, or worse, injured, by helping them.  What if when the adults beamed them out they’d hurt her too?  “Do you think she’s okay, Hayah?”  

“Chel said she’s here.”

Elinor blew out a breath, thoughtful.  “Chel’s four.  She could be wrong.  Besides, Scout could be here and hurt.”  She stopped again, remembering.  “I’ll try to find out what traumatic induction is in case she has it too...crap.”

“What?”

“Grounded from electronics, remember?  We can’t look anything up.”  If they wanted her to regret her actions more than she already did, it was working.  “And if we ask, Corpsman Bhattacharya will know we were eavesdropping.”

“How long do you think we’ll be grounded?”

“Well, I did memorize dad’s passwords and use them to hack station security.  So I’m probably not going to get access until he trusts me again.”  She scrubbed her face with her palms.  “I’ll probably be asking him to turn the lights off for me until I go to college.  I don’t know about you, though.  You might get access back sooner, except they probably figure that you’ll let me use yours.”

She was interrupted by a rich alto voice coming from the doorway.  “I am here to retrieve the children.”  It was Nilin, Hayah’s mother.  She didn’t enter the room because she didn’t fit through the door.  The infirmary had double doors just in case it was necessary to get Nilin inside, but they weren’t kept open all the time, and the adult female Fa Hanle was almost two meters wide.

Bhattacharya gestured to Hayah and Elinor.  They navigated the maze of closely spaced beds to the door.  Nilin’s body was the same elephantine gray as her son’s, but her sensory tentacles were deep slate rather than pale yellow and she was heavy enough to crush Elinor, which she probably wanted to do about now.  “I’m keeping Chel here,”  Bhattacharya told Nilin.

“Is she alright?”

The Corpsman dismissed her question with a head shake.  “I’ll let you talk to Stalit about his daughter’s condition.”

“Is there anything I should keep an ear out for with these two?”

Bhattacharya consulted his data pad.  “In Elinor’s case, dizziness, headaches, sensory disturbances, basically call me if anything unusual happens.  I can’t give you any direction really with Hayah, my records have very little information on Na Hesh children, and nothing on males.  I’d say just watch for the same kind of symptoms with him as with her.  No unnecessary physical activity for either of them and let Commander Stalit and me know immediately if the cloud alien shows up.  It’s late enough, I’d suggest you just put them to bed.”

“Understood,” Nilin said.  “Come, Hayah, Elinor.  We will remain in my quarters.”

Elinor followed Hayah out the door.  Nilin slid along the floor on three large handling tentacles, surprisingly quick for a being as large as she was.  Elinor had to walk briskly to keep up.  Nilin spoke again.  “Tomorrow, or when you are medically cleared, you will be given tasks to ensure you are useful and out of trouble.  You will both be assigned to the maintenance detail.  The walls, floors and windows of this station are long overdue for washing. By hand.”

Nothing on the station ever required washing.  A combination of dirt repelling surface coverings and mobile cleaning remotes ensured that station surfaces remained sanitary at all times.  Either this job was pure punishment, or perhaps it was a test of their willingness to take correction like adults and, if they performed well, maybe have some privileges returned to them before they died of old age or traumatic induction, whatever that was.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind a transitional chapter, I know, but I need it and the next one to set up for the next bit in series.
> 
> If anybody bothered to write a comment I'd probably write a whole thing based on a prompt for them.
> 
> Comments rule.


	8. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elinor reconnects with Scout, and learns the consequences of their actions.

Warm, moist air, green and muddy smelling wafted into the hallway when the double wide door to Hayah and Nilin’s cavelike quarters slid open.  Nilin and Hayah crossed the threshold into the darkness and slid immediately into the three meter deep, cloudy pool that replaced most of the floor.  Fine bubbles rose lazily to the surface of the water around the edges of the pool, hissing gently as they reached the surface.  Elinor skirted around the side of the room to the above water alcove and tapped on the alcove light.  

She opened the drawer where she kept her rebreather mask and pulled it on, taking a moment to check the power supply, though she could swim well enough that the mask was more a convenience than a safety feature.   She paused long enough to kick off her shoes and tuck them neatly into the same drawer, then squatted at the water’s edge. Ripples hinted at where Nilin and Hayah might be, but she couldn’t see more than a few centimeters into the dark water.  Ordinarily she would get a little running start and cannonball in, but ordinarily she wasn’t grounded, so she slid carefully in instead, trying not to land on top of Nilin.  The water was warm, curled up in blankets in the morning warm, water-shower warm.  It made her sleepy.

A tentacle wrapped around her ankle and pulled her under.  She reached out and caught a loop on the wall with one hand to hold herself in place.  It was disorienting down here, and strange to think this was where most Na Hesh spent the bulk of their time on their homeworld, under murky water, navigating by sonar.  Her ankle prickled.

“Want to see who can do the most flips?” Hayah asked.

“You both need to rest.  Elinor.  You may remain in the water for ten standard minutes, then you must pull out the sleep mat in the work room and lie down until your father comes for you.”  The sound from Nilin’s voder was distorted in the water, making it harder to tell where she was.  

A couple of diffuse blotches of light, one golden yellow down at the far end of the pool, one a paler lemony shade right behind or possibly next to Hayah, broke up the monotonous blackness in front of her faceplate.  “Did you put lights in down here?”

“Visible light emitters?” Nilin said.  “Why would I do that?  The infrared is sufficient for basking.  Is there something wrong with your eyes?”

“I don’t think so,” Elinor replied.

“I will inform Corpsman Bhattacharya.” Nilin would of course continue to be a giant busybody.

Elinor swam back upward and broke the surface of the water, Hayah beside her.  “Sometimes I see things in here because it’s so dark.”

“That makes no sense.”  Nilin called Bhattacharya.  “Elinor is reporting that she is seeing patches of light in my quarters.”

“In your quarters,” Bhattacharya repeated.  “That’s to be expected.  The visual processing center of the human brain will generate false signals in total darkness.”

“I see.  I apologize for disturbing you.”

“No, not at all.  I’m glad you mentioned it.”  The connection clicked off.

Elinor sighed loudly.  “I told you so.”  She turned a couple of flips in the water, accidentally kicking at Hayah on her second trip around.  He ducked her under.

“Hayah, you are fatigued.  Go rest now.”  Nilin wasn’t putting up with horseplay at all today, it seemed.  “Elinor, up and out.  Go lie down.”

There was no use arguing with Nilin.  The warm water had left her sleepy, she had to admit, so she kicked  over to the edge of the pool and climbed out, then dried off under the blower for a minute before pulling out her sleep mat and lying on it obediently.  Na Hesh sonar could see in all directions and, creepily, inside bodies, so not only could Nilin tell where Elinor was and what she was doing while completely submerged and invisible, she could tell from her heart rate and breathing whether she was “resting” or not.  And since according to Nilin, sonar was perfectly normal, unlike those gross jelly ball light collectors on the front of human heads, she neither refrained from assessing Elinor’s physical state, nor from announcing it to all concerned at the slightest provocation.  It made Elinor feel naked, a lot more so than Stalit’s rarely mentioned or used telepathic talent, or even Chel’s more frequent slip ups in the same arena.

She hoped Chel was going to be okay.  She lay on her back, knees bent, hands resting on her stomach, pretending to rest.  The lights still shimmered and refracted underwater.  After a couple of eternities, the door chimed.  Thank Glob.  “I’ll get it,” she said, hopping up and skirting around the edge of the room again to the door.  It was Dad.

Her dad gathered her into a one armed hug.  “Elinor, we’re meeting Stalit at the observation platform,” he said.  He looked flattened out, tense and tired.  Even his hug was tired.  It felt like it was sucking the energy right out of her.

Elinor started to leave with him, but stopped to look down into the water.  “Wait.  Are we going to see Scout?”

“The alien has been hanging around the station.  It left for a couple of hours, but it’s back again.  I calibrated the sensors to watch for it, and I’m pretty sure it’s been inside the station as well.  It doesn’t seem to be confined to normal space.”  

She didn’t want Hayah to miss out on his chance to talk to a new alien just because the station commander was sort of her dad.  “Hayah’s better at talking to her than I am. They see things the same way. We should bring him.”

Nilin’s voice rose out of the water.  “Hayah is asleep.  Recall that he suffered radiation injury.”  She did not bother to hide the accusation in her tone.

Why exactly was Elinor always responsible for everything any of them did when Hayah was over a year older?  “Sorry,” she said again.  “I guess he’ll just have to miss out.”

Nilin blew a mass of large bubbles underwater.  “Another time,” she said, more gently.  “I doubt those aliens are going anywhere.”

“Yeah.  I’ll say hi for him.”  She followed Dad out of Hayah’s quarters, still awkward and not-normal feeling after all of the stuff going on.  She realized she had no idea what time it was.  “I heard Bhattacharya talking.  Is Chel going to be okay?”

Dad didn’t answer for a long time, all the way down the hallway leading from Hayah’s quarters and into the lift, then, “We don’t know.  The alien, Scout you called her, damaged her midbrain.  The damage propagates through the brain, almost like a computer virus.  It’s progressing very rapidly in Chel, probably because she’s so young.  They’re sending a mind healer as fast as they can, but we’re kind of out in the boonies here.  That’s also why Stalit isn’t trying to contact the alien himself.  He’s not trained in first contact, so it would be very easy for the alien to hurt him by accident.”  

“Can’t Stalit fix Chel?”  The door to the lift opened.

“Honey, Stalit...that’s really not his skill set.”

Not his skillset!  Elinor thought that when you didn’t know how to do something, anything, you studied and practiced until you got it right.  That strategy worked for hacking, and math, and swimming, so Stalit was just being stupid.  “Well, he could try,”  she said.  

Dad threw up his hands the way he did when he either didn’t want to take the time to explain something (rare) or didn’t know how to explain something.  Usually his next move was to tell her to look it up.  He jogged after her.  She ran ahead to where Stalit was standing in front of the observation window.  Scout floated outside, filling most of the viewing area and partially obscuring the nebula with her translucent body.

Elinor stood next to Stalit, mirroring his pose, feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind her back.  

“Sa-mekh?”   she said, looking out at the cloud alien and into the nebula.  

“Yes?” Stalit said.

She screwed up a little courage.  “What does traumatic induction mean?  I overheard Corpsman Bhattacharya mention it.”

Stalit’s eyes stayed fixed on the observation window.  “It is the permanent destruction of the naturally occurring barriers in psi-latent species due to extreme telepathic loading.”

“Dad?”

“Yes Elinor?”

“What does traumatic induction mean?”

Dad translated, “It means you, Hayah, and Kkit will probably develop some telepathic ability over the next few days.  How much is hard to say.  You might not even notice.”

She turned away from the nebula to look at her dad, and then at Stalit, who were both definitely glowing now, her dad surrounded by faint greenish fire against the dimly lit wall, Stalit surrounded by a brighter, but not as wavy band of red-orange.  She rubbed her eyes.   Not only did the effect not fade, she could still see it through her eyelids.  Weird.  “Is that why you glow now?”

“Probably.”  Stalit still hadn’t turned to look at her.

“So we’re not going to die from it.”

“That outcome is not likely,” Stalit said.  

“But Chel…”

Stalit turned to her.  “Corpsman Bhattacharya is consulting with experts in Chel’s illness.  She appears to be unusually susceptible due to her age.  If the corpsman can maintain her biological functions until the mind healer arrives, she will recover.  If he cannot, she will be lost to us.”

“Bhattacharya doesn’t think a healer can get here in time, does he.”  She didn't use the question voice, because it was obvious.

“No.  He does not.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I do not have the aptitude.  I can, with considerable effort, affect a meld with a member of my own species.  Or a human, humans being unusually easy to contact.  I cannot perceive the mind to the level of detail needed to repair the kind of damage Chel has suffered.  My senses are too imprecise.”

“So we just have to wait and hope the healer gets here in time.”  Introducing a brand new species to the Federation should be fun.  Knowing that her baby sister was dying sucked all the fun out of everything.

“Indeed.”  He turned back to the window.  “We assume this is the entity who contacted you before.  Can you ascertain whether it is?”

It was definitely Scout.  The alien felt like Scout, the way Elinor felt when she encountered some small and fragile animal on planetary leave, wanting to hold it, the better to see it, but afraid of harming it with her clumsy human hands.

“I’m sure.”  The cloud floated outside the window, glowing softly.  “What do I do?  To let it know I want to talk to it.”

Stalit considered.  “Focus your attention on it.  Study it in detail.  Meditate on positive memories of your prior encounter.”

“I suck at meditating.”

“Yes, we know,” Dad said.

She swallowed, took her bottom lip between her teeth, gazed into the cloud’s glowing violet depths.

“Don’t bite your lip.”  Really, Stalit, was this the time to criticize her mannerisms?  She liked the feel of her teeth gently pressing down on her lip.  Squish, squish.

“When you fall into rapport with the entity, you may bite through it,” Stalit explained.

Oh.  She pouted her lip back out.  “Hey Scout, come say hello!” she said.  The sound of her voice bounced off the walls.  She tried to remember something about a nest woven out of mothers and Scout laughing at the idea that Elinor had only one parent.  Two, she corrected herself, I really do have two--and something caught her up and she forgot not to be afraid.  “No!” she shouted.  And she was back on the decking.  Boogers.

“Sorry, I chickened out.  I’ll try again before she runs off.”  She stared into the cloud again.  Gravity swirled around her and she floated up and out of her body again.  This time she was not surprised by it, and forced herself to push past her fear.  She was up in the cloud place. Worry/sorrow/pain, reflected from Scout.  A question.  I’m okay, she told it--her.  She pushed forward a quick set of concepts, Kkit well, Hayah recovering, all of them in trouble, and Chel very much not okay.  Scout wrapped herself around Elinor and made crying.  She was hurt, too, but getting better on her own.  Her parents didn’t know yet what she had done.

My dads want to talk to your moms, she thought, creating the images in her mind.  The images floated in the purple space they inhabited, more solid and real than her imagination usually could manage on its own.   It looked like the neural net programming interface she’d been trying to learn on the holodeck.  Not as much as Stalit’s imaginary mindspace did, she realized, but still.  Scout didn’t want to tell her parents she’d contacted the dense people.  Everybody here thinks you’re a hero, she told Scout.  My dads will tell your moms how smart and brave you were.

Scout considered.  Stay learn here?  Elinor replied, you want to come back and visit more?  Yes.  Elinor told her she’d ask her dads, but told her to leave Chel and the “one who felt like Chel” alone because they were fragile.  Agreement.  She dropped back into her body and immediately thumped to the decking, having lost her balance.

Scout moved away from the window and eventually could no longer be distinguished from the rest of the nebula, but the thread that tied them together glowed brighter now, enough that she thought she might be able to send messages along if she tried.

Dad and Stalit, on the other hand, had changed from being wreathed in gentle pastel glows to looking as though they were on fire.  She could barely see her dad’s face through the swirling patterns of yellow green light that covered him from the knees to about fifteen centimeters above his head.  Stalit’s red orange glow was brighter too, but still as smooth and featureless as a bubble and the most bizarre, she could see it even though he was behind her..  She turned her head, and the room spun around her so hard she had to lie down on the decking.  Both dads went to their knees to check up on her, the floor seeming to tilt violently underneath them so that she scrabbled at it involuntarily with her fingers.  She couldn’t find her words.

“Step away from her for a moment, Rene,” Stalit was saying, his voice reaching her ears as through water.  He took Dad’s arm and guided him away to where the observation deck faded into the corridor beyond.  As they walked away the floor rolled under her again, tilting downward toward them.

She rolled onto her side.  They left her all alone here to lie on the floor and be sick.  Thanks, dads, she thought sarcastically.  In a moment, the room stopped feeling quite so wavy and she pushed to sit, fighting off a wave of queasiness.  She didn’t think standing up would be a good idea at all.  Stalit walked back toward her, still in his shiny tomato bubble, leaving her dad far behind.  He stopped about two meters away.  “What are you experiencing?”

She needed to stop and think, and be sensible.  “You and dad are glowing.  Really bright, so bright it’s hard to look at you.  But I can’t not look at you because I can still see it when I look away.  And the floor is moving around and making me sick.”  There were blobs of light seeping up from under the floor behind her head.  What was down there?

Stalit’s bubble wavered.  He turned his back to her for a moment and said, “Can you hear my voice?”

“Yeah, Stalit, I’m not deaf,” she said.  He turned back around, bubble sharp again.

“I see.”  He regarded her.  “You seem to have developed the predicted ability precipitously.  I will relay this information to Corpsman Bhattacharya.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can read my thoughts at a distance of two meters.  A prodigious talent.  We must address this development immediately.  I will see you back to our quarters and consult with Corpsman Bhattacharya.”

Elinor crawled over to the wall and used it to haul herself upright.  “Wait.   Like as in stronger than you?”

“Considerably, why?”

“Because you look exactly like the neural net programming language interface I’ve been playing with on the holodeck,” she said.  Maybe…”I want my screen access back!”

“Please logically connect those statements.”

“The neural net programming interface I’ve been learning for fun, on the holodeck, looks like the inside of your head.”

“I still don’t see the relevance.”

“It’s a Vulcan designed programming interface.  So I bet it’s supposed to look like that.  Computers are brains.  Brains are computers.  I need to learn that interface.”

Stalit shook his head.  “Your father will not permit you access until he is satisfied that you will give up hacking.”

Elinor shook her head, frowning.  “I am so not giving up hacking.  I’m a hacker.  That’s what I do.”  She made her way toward the corridor, using the wall for balance.

Stalit waited for her there.  Dad had already gone, which was just as well.  She was pretty sure she’d fall over again if he got anywhere near her.  That could be inconvenient.  “Why is this suddenly so important to you?”

She waited until she met him at the entrance to the corridor.  “I’m going to hack my sister.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of **the LLF Comment Project,** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
> 

> 
> LLF Comment Builder
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> This author replies to comments.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my favorite, if you have questions related to this story, I will answer anything that is not a major spoiler, and I can also be reached through my tumblr account, which is under prairiedawn.
> 
> This fic happens roughly thirty years after "A Girl and Her Sock Monkey."
> 
> Grammar note: Kkit will not have a gender until they reach puberty. I occasionally refer to them by a gendered pronoun, and may not have caught all of them. Please leave me a comment if you catch an error.


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